[NatureNS] phases of the moon

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Hi All,                June 8, 2008
    I expect we all agree that 'It is bad luck to be superstitious'. But 
it is a good idea not to entirely discount anything until it has been 
tested. Some things that we take for granted (gravity, light, magnetism, 
electromagnetic radiation in general) are strange but because they have 
been extensively investigated and widely experienced nobody questions them.

    My first question about sauerkraut/moon effects would be, what 
happens if the batch is started at some other phase of the moon ? Does 
it ferment as it should or does it fail ?

    Go back a few hundred years and few country folk would have 
calendars or other convenient ways of keeping track of time or receipes 
but everybody had the moon. So this receipe might have originated as a 
mneumonic way to record the experience that fermentation of sauerkraut 
takes about two moons. And it could be one of these fermentations that 
release gas as two peaks; from solutes  immediately available for 
fermentation and from polymers that must first be hydrolized to 
fermentable solutes.

Yours truly, Dave Webster, Kentville

Paul S. Boyer wrote:

> This is folk-magic.  It is pretty neat folklore (the bit about the  
> pickle rising as the moon waxes is a nice parallelism), but it is 
> pure  superstition.  Ask yourself, how in the world the moon can 
> effect the  chemistry of what is going on in your picked kraut.  There 
> is the  vacuum of space between your mixture and the moon!
>
> On Jun 7, 2008, at 8:22 PM, Roland McCormick wrote:
>
>> Another place where the moon enters in to the farming picture is in  
>> the making of saur krout. The cabbage is cut up and placed in a  
>> barrel, salted, and then pounded.  This should be done on the new  
>> moon, and as the moon gets larger the pickle rises on the krout  
>> until at the full moon the krout is swimming in pickle. After the  
>> full moon it disappears, then rises again as the moon increases in  
>> size. I presume that the process is the same as the reason the moon  
>> influences the tides.
>>     What I never understood is why, after you had let the krout go  
>> through this process for a couple of months you could put the barrel  
>> outdoors and let the krout freeze, and the pickle would never rise  
>> again.
>>
>> Roland
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David & Alison Webster" 
>> <dwebster@glinx.com >
>> To: <naturens@chebucto.ns.ca>
>> Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 8:19 PM
>> Subject: Re: [NatureNS] phases of the moon
>>
>

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